Verizon to roll out 4G service in Bay Area

Verizon will roll out next generation wireless service offering speeds up to 10 times faster than today’s network in 38 metropolitan areas by the end of the year, including San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland.

Lowell McAdam, president and chief operating officer of the Basking Ridge, N.J. carrier, announced the news this morning during his keynote at the CTIA conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

“This network coupled with millions of different applications will connect people, places and things that previously were not connected, or in ways that are much richer, much more multidimensional than ever before,” he said.

He specifically said the new network will enable player to player mobile gaming with “instantaneous response time,” as well as new applications in mobile commerce, remote health care consults, security surveillance and natural disaster response.

The company expects the service will be available to 110 million Americans by the end of the year, and to all current 3G customers by the close of 2013.

Verizon is also rolling out its so called 4G LTE service to 62 commercial airports, including San Francisco International.

The company expects the network to provide average data rates between 5 to 12 megabits per second for downloads and 2 to 5 megabits per second for uploads.

Other major carriers, including Sprint and AT&T, also plan to test or roll out 4G networks in the months ahead.

Analysts are quick to point out that the carriers are advertising best case scenario speeds for their 4G services.

While the networks will relay data considerably faster when the signals are strong, they’re not a panacea for the dropped calls and weak connections that plague a region brimming with gadget lovers and bandwidth hogs. Moreover, consumers won’t be able to enjoy the new technology unless they own or upgrade to one of the few compatible smart phones or devices.

McAdam said that the company will showcase several such phones, tablets and other gadgets — which should become available during the first half of the year — at the CES conference in January.

In a subsequent press conference, McAdam declined to confirm the details of a Wall Street Journal article this morning that said Apple Inc. will produce an iPhone that would allow Verizon Wireless to begin selling the popular smart phone early next year. It cited people briefed by Apple.

“I can’t give you any insights on that,” he responded. “I expect at some point in time, our business interests are going to align and things like LTE are another reason why they’d want to have a phone or tablet on this network.”

Several companies, including Verizon, have the raised the prospect of instituting tiered pricing for high speed wireless networks, charging users more when they exceed certain data thresholds.

McAdam didn’t provide any details on pricing for the networks today, saying they would be revealed closer to the actual launch. But he did reiterate the possibility of tiered pricing in the near future.

“I don’t think LTE necessarily forces us to move to that model,” he said. “But I would say, clearly over time we’ll be migrating to a bucket of megabytes (or gigabytes approach, where) people pay for what they need.”